


Quel oeil de feu

by oubliance



Category: A Place of Greater Safety - Hilary Mantel
Genre: Extended Scene, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2013-06-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 23:16:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oubliance/pseuds/oubliance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Extension to the final scene of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/611494">Brûlé par l’amour du beau</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quel oeil de feu

**Author's Note:**

> For madamedarque.  
> [](http://www.tracemyip.org/)  
> 

He breathes like a slow flute. Not by volition – if it were a choice, Camille might cease to breathe at all – but because his lungs insist upon the drawing-in of breath, and its release in tedious mouthfuls. Although now this air, silky with cold and sore to the throat, is the air that d'Anton also breathes, and more pleasant for that. D’Anton’s fingers find the back of his earlobe, then the skull behind his ear. You aren’t going to cry or make a fuss, he tells himself. People imagine that he lives at such a pace, such a breakneck scramble from bed to ink and back to bed again, but they forget that he is just as good at stillness. And now he is entirely still, in the hands of d’Anton, who will soon pull away his coat, throw it aside, look at him in his ragged shirt and be charmed, sorry, or both at once. Is there anything to me? Camille wonders. Anything but bones and eyes, blue-tinged fingers and a mouth?

The wheels of the cab rattle and d’Anton’s private litany of touch goes on and on. Not many minutes before they reach his own street, the apartment where his wife sits drinking chocolate in a pool of light: and yet the moments stretch themselves, like thick honey hanging between the spoon and the honey-dish. He brushes his hand across Camille’s eyes, to feel the lashes, then turns his friend’s mouth up to kiss it while there's still time.

To be forgiven is not new to Camille – he’s been wringing out absolution in pallid drops for more years than he can readily count up – but the indulgence closes his throat as once the river-water did, and if d’Anton were to ask him for some answer, he’d have none to give.

*


End file.
